Risk Management at the UFZ

Since 2003 there has been a risk management system (RMS) at the UFZ to keep potential risks under control, to ensure an early identification of existentially threatening developments and to implement mitigation measures in due time to prevent them.

The German Law on Corporate Control and Transparency (KonTraG) that took effect on 27th April 1998 serves as the foundation for setting up this risk management system.

Based on legal obligations according to the German Law on Corporate Control and Transparency, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) summoned the members of the Helmholtz Community to set up a respective monitoring system.

To this end, the risk management officer has three main tasks:

Coordination of RMS activities:Implementation of the RMS objectives of executive management, realisation of RMS, naming of potential risk and procedure owners to the risk manager, compilation and updating of the risk management manual, updating of procedures and instruments for collecting data and reporting on the risk situation

Risk reporting:Acceptance and archiving of the quarterly/ annual risk reports of the structural subdivisions, joint assessment of the reported risks with the risk owners in terms of their essentiality for the UFZ and the summary of these into a consolidated report for executive management, receipt and handling of ad-hoc risk reports and information of the executive management, collection of information and forwarding of risk management information to the structural subdivisions

Risk control:Ensuring a timely submission of the reports, testing the plausibility of risk reports

The executive management remains entirely responsible however for controlling risks within the UFZ. The administrative director of the UFZ is the responsible risk manager of the centre.